The plasma display panel (hereafter referred to as PDP) consists basically of a front substrate and a rear substrate.
The front substrate comprises: a glass substrate; display electrodes including stripe-like transparent electrodes and bus electrodes formed on a principal surface of the glass substrate; a dielectric layer covering the display electrodes to act as a capacitor; and a protective layer composed of MgO formed on the dielectric layer.
The glass substrate adopts a glass substrate produced by float process, a glass manufacturing technology easy for large-sizing and excellent in flattening. The display electrodes include transparent electrodes provided by the TFT (thin film transistor) processing, on which predetermined patterns are formed using a paste including Ag to obtain a sufficient electrical conductivity before sintering it to form the bus electrodes. The dielectric glass layer is formed by sintering a dielectric paste coated so as to cover the display electrodes having the transparent electrodes and bus electrodes. Finally, a protective layer composed of MgO is formed on the dielectric layer by the TFT processing.
The rear substrate comprises: a glass substrate; stripe-like address electrodes formed on a principal surface of the glass substrate; a dielectric layer covering the address electrodes; ribs formed on the dielectric layer; and phosphor layers provided between the ribs internally to emit red, green and blue light respectively.
The front substrate and rear substrate are sealed hermetically so that principal surface sides provided with the electrodes face each other, and the discharge spaces divided by the ribs are filled with discharge gas such as Ne—Xe gas mixture at a pressure of ranging from 400 Torr to 600 Torr.
The PDP allows the display electrodes to discharge by applying image signal voltage selectively, exciting each phosphor layer to emit red, green and blue light by the ultra-violet ray generated in the discharge to perform colored image displaying. The examples are disclosed in “General Information on Plasma Display” by H. Uchiike & S. Mikoshiba, (Tokyo: Kogyo Chosakai Publishing Co., Ltd. May 1, 1997), p. 79 to 80.
In recent years, however, expectations for TV sets with high-resolution and multi-gradation and that consume less power, including high-definition TVs, are increasing rapidly. A fully equipped 42-inch high-definition TV set expected recently has 1920×1125 pixels with a very small cell pitch of 0.15×0.48 mm. The problem of decrease in the brightness and luminous efficiency would become apparently in such a high-resolution PDP.
Measures therefore such as to increase Xe concentration in the discharge gas or to use double-cross shaped ribs for the PDP has been tried. However, increased Xe concentration in the discharge gas or introduction of the double-cross shaped ribs for the PDP could cause a large increase in a drive voltage and an unstable address discharge, thereby causing a problem of obtaining a high picture quality.
The present invention aims at providing a PDP capable of displaying with high brightness and of realizing a stable driving on the low drive voltage.